Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Is that real? Forklift trucks!
Lot of Americans are pretty massive, I guess?
Is that real? Forklift trucks!
Lot of Americans are pretty massive, I guess?
there seems to be a relation between those ending up on intensive care stations and overweight. dutch news is reporting that 90% of all people on intensive care have overweight. apparently the virus attaches to so called ACE2-receptors. the lungs and the stomach have a lot of those and so have fat cells.
I clicked on that link and I see China at number four in the hit parade.
I just read an intriguing little post about Baudrillard's simulacra in relation to coronavirus and how our mental image of what a pandemic looks like and how to respond to one has for a lot of us been almost entirely formed from depictions in art and pop culture and that mental image is about to collide with the real thing. Notice people keep saying it "feels like something from a film" or it "doesn't feel real".
Same.
Version has angered the internet gods in some way as nothing seems to work for him.
I don't understand this post. Can you post the link so I can read it?
I only have a very rudimentary understanding of this concept so I'll just outline it and I'd be interested in other people's thoughts. I'm interested in the fact that a large portion of society has quite a well constructed mental image of what a pandemic looks like, from a vast amount of pop culture and art produced over the century since the 1918 influenza pandemic, but probably very few people have experience of the real world situation.
It seems that our experience and even the actions and policies of our elites may be guided and constructed through these simulacra.
Note I am not suggesting nor do I believe that the pandemic is not real and is constructed in the sense of The Gulf War did not Take Place. I just find it odd that we all have such a well defined mental model of what a pandemic looks like without ever having experienced one before.
I think you're onto something in that the 'mental image of what a pandemic looks like' is about to encounter 'the live experience of pandemic.'
It’s not that the virus isn’t a serious threat but people’s interpretation of current events is colored by pop culture representations of pandemics. Baudrillard presented the simulacra as a coercive tool that elites use to manipulate the public. Maybe this is happening with covid. There has definitely been sensationalization in the media but the virus is definitely real and there is no vaccination. If anything, I think they may be using our understanding of apocalyptic pandemics (brought to us by pop culture simulacra) to inspire an exaggerated fear in the public.
Regardless, our brains are being warped right now. And thinking about these ideas is as important as ever. This is a great conversation to start.
Besides the contrast between our borrowed idea of a pandemic and the reality of it - I think there is something real in people getting a strange joy out of "living in the end times". This is the Freudian Death Drive that gives us a thrill watching movies like Contagion, that keeps us discussing and watching the news. We all know we're going to die one day so activities that bring us closer to it makes us value our lives and the lives of others more, esp. in the heat of the moment. But since we sit back and watch these shows on screens, we are cut off from instinctual behaviour that would engage in and release this death drive. The death drive becomes stagnant, we become cynical, nihilistic. We end up knowing how horrible the deaths of others in this world are but we can't really BELIEVE in how horrible it is. Knowing something is true doesn't mean we act like it is true. We end up not being able to be bothered by the inundation of info, of tragic facts broadcasted from the end times...
It's very difficult for people to see beyond the simulacra. Communication depends on description, but the map is not the territory. The trade-off for this world of omnipresent real-time communication that we live in is that the map is all-encompassing, all-engrossing, and the scary thing is - one you are exposed to the idea of a thing, it takes the place of the thing itself in your mind.
We are rapidly losing track that there ever was a terrain.
There is a way out, but it involves psychological depth work (introspection, analysis) - which few are prepared to do, preferring the fantasies in which they live to the starker reality that lies behind it. But the reality still exists, even if people can't see it.
We talk about living in virtual reality sometime in the future, but we've been living in virtual reality for a long time already now.
Welcome to the Desert of the Real.
Yes the virus caused the markets to crash. The virus caused us to print tens of trillions of dollars. All of this needed due to the shock caused by the virus. The virus caused massive reduction in demand for gasoline. all the gasoline we once wanted we dont want it anymore because of the virus. We have started buying corporate bonds with the direct proceeds of the printing press (electronic) because the virus caused such a lack of faith in everything that all of the prices fell. the virus is a direct cause of people buying gold and silver right now due to their anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties. It is no longer possible to find gold anywhere because people are very very sick right now. you have to stay at home and your movement must be tracked by gps etc etc because the virus.
that is all
A kind of martial law has taken hold and we all were OK with it. Because in the movies, that's what we have to do. Weather or not it's right, the reason people aren't fighting it is because it's what is expected of us, although none of us have any experience with this.